Home>Blog>Skills>Unemployment among computer science graduates – what does the data say?

08 July 2015

Unemployment among computer science graduates – what does the data say?

Almost every university in England offers courses in computer science. There is a demand for graduates with computer science skills. So why does it have a high rate of unemployed graduates? Changes to accreditation might be part of the answer, but first we need to take a look at the facts.

The landscape

During the late 1990s undergraduate entrants studying full-time on computer science courses at English higher education institutions increased rapidly peaking at around 29,000 in 2002-03. Over the subsequent four years entrant numbers quickly declined to around 17,500 by 2006-07 before returning to more modest rates of growth. The impact of the 2012-13 higher education fees and funding regime changes seems to have been particularly pronounced for computer science. Numbers recovered somewhat in 2013-14, but remain 9 per cent lower than in 2010-11.

In each of the last six years, more students have begun computer science courses than physics, chemistry and maths combined. So there was obvious concern when it was noted that of undergraduates who qualify across all higher education subjects, computer science has consistently had the highest rate of unemployed graduates (see for example HESA’s statistical first release or HEFCE’s interactive data tool).

Computer science is taught at the large majority of universities – 90 of 130 English higher education institutions report students studying computer science. Most other STEM subjects are concentrated in a smaller number of institutions. Institutions teaching computer science display substantial differences in the proportion of their graduates who appear to be unemployed (see the Unistats course assistant to view the employment and accreditation data for computer science courses).

* Full-time first degree qualifiers who provide a valid response to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey. Based on qualifiers in academic years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14. Institutional grouping is defined by the average tariff score of an institution’s young (under 21) UK-domiciled undergraduate entrants holding level 3 qualifications which are subject to the UCAS Tariff.

And all of this combines with wider concerns. There are concerns about the proportion of undergraduate computer science students who progress into low-paid or non-graduate level employment. There are concerns over the reliance our computer science departments have on international recruitment to fill their labs and postgraduate courses. And there are concerns from industry about the skills, agility and work-readiness of those computer science graduates flowing into the workforce.

Time to reflect and review

In this landscape, it seems right to reflect and review. The Government has asked me to look at these issues through the work of an independent review. Our review is also tasked with generating recommendations about how to change accreditation so that it keeps pace with the needs of the profession. It is due to report towards the end of November.**

In this blog I wanted to present some of the basic data the review will draw on and solicit help to make sense of the data and even extend it. The review will need to take a closer look at the evidence, and the various ways to interpret it. Some of this will draw on publicly available data, but we welcome responses to the review in the light of other data and evidence.

HEFCE’s interactive data tools allow anyone to delve into a number of largely unexplored characteristics of graduates’ employment. Here I am looking specifically at those qualifying from computer science. We explore one or two of the findings that the review team thought were particularly interesting. This is not a comprehensive analysis. Others may well identify other and different traits that could be of interest. But it is food for thought.

A question of background

Many will know already that computer science has a distinctive profile of students. Notably it has more men, students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and students with lower previous levels of attainment.

The statistics show that unemployment among black and minority ethnic graduates from full-time, first degrees is six percentage points higher than among white graduates. But interestingly this difference is smaller than it is for graduates from comparable subjects like electronic and electrical engineering or mathematical sciences.

* Full-time first degree qualifiers whose ethnic background in known and who provide a valid response to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey. Based on qualifiers in academic years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

The data also allows us to look at ‘disadvantaged’ students – defined here as students who come from neighbourhoods with low levels of participation in higher education.

Computer science seems to be doing at least as well as other STEM subjects. The level of unemployment among full-time graduates from computer science courses who come from disadvantaged backgrounds is only one percentage point higher than for the majority of STEM subjects.

And from a different angle – gender – the differences disappear. The unemployment rate for men and women graduating from computer science is the same.

Salary and sector

What about those students who are employed? Does this show us anything distinctive about the profile of computer science graduates?

Around 65 per cent of computer science qualifiers who enter full-time paid employment within six months of leaving HE tell us that they earn less than £25,000. This compares with 55 per cent of equivalent qualifiers from electronic and electrical engineering courses, and with 60 per cent of those qualifying from mathematical sciences.

* Full-time first degree qualifiers who provide a valid response to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey; report that they enter full-time paid employment; and provide salary information. Based on qualifiers in academic years 2011-12 and 2012-13.

When we look at the sectors of industry in which graduates are employed, a high proportion (38 per cent) work in the information and communication industry. The rest are dispersed across a wide range of industries; this is unusual among many STEM disciplines.

* Full-time first degree qualifiers who provide a valid response to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey and report that they enter employment. Based on qualifiers in academic years 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Computer science graduates show some differences from their peers in other STEM subjects in terms of their likelihood of securing employment in a professional or managerial role.

Among those who gain employment in a micro, small- or medium-sized business, around 86 per cent occupy a professional or managerial role within that business. For those in the largest firms, 68 per cent were in these types of roles. This means that a computer science graduate gaining employment in a larger firm is more likely to work in an administrative, trade, service, sales, plant operative or elementary role than their counterpart who is working in a smaller firm.

The story is similar for those qualifying from electronic and electrical engineering, though the differences between smaller and larger firms are less.

But for maths graduates those employed in large and medium firms were the ones most likely to be in the professional and managerial roles, with their counterparts in smaller firms being least likely to be in these types of roles.

* Full-time first degree qualifiers who provide a valid response to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey and report that they enter employment. Based on qualifiers in academic years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

Now over to you

Now over to you. We’re keen to hear your thoughts around computer science graduate employability. Whether accreditation plays any role or could assume a more significant one in the future. Do provide your own comments on the review in the survey. In doing this we hope that readers will take the opportunity to explore our quantitative data themselves, as well as drawing on their own evidence bases.

I don’t see any consideration in the terms of reference or in the survey (although I could have missed it) of the notion of research degree/doctoral study as a type of ‘career option’ rather than, as is usually posited, a ‘further study’ option. I think this may result in missing a trick in terms of a full picture of ’employability’. As one member of a team who’ve just finished looking at graduates’ uptake (and the motivations for and barriers to) doctoral education in ICT here in Australia, I’d be interested in knowing whether this will be one of the thing you’ll be looking at.

ArgieBee

The simple explanation for the high level of unemployment for Compter Science graduates 6 months after graduating is that more are graduating than there is demand for people with those degrees. However the “shortage myth” has become so embedded that people find this hard to believe and therefore do not look for the right solution.

Only about half of CS grads will get SOC1/SOC2 graduate level jobs related to their degrees. Professor Emma Smith of Birmingham University found a similar problem in with engineering degrees (www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14823042). There is an argument that the problem is the quality of the graduates and lack of softer skills, but I am not convinced about that.

Once you accept that there are more graduates than entry level jobs, then you can look at the possible real cause of the high unemployment. I suspect there are 2 reasons:

a) CS grads expect to get IT/CS jobs and find it hard to accept that many will need to compete for jobs outside that i.e. their expectations are out of sync with reality partly due to misinformation about shortages. Therefore they hold out much longer before seeking other types of work.

b) employers do not see CS as a good generic degree for a job outside IT/CS, so CS grads find it hard competing for these jobs.

Possibly the solution is to improve the image of CS as a generic degree that would be useful for jobs outside IT/CS.

I also expect that since 2000, there has been a large decline in entry level IT/CS graduate trainee jobs. It would be interesting to know if there are any figures on that. For many years, Richard Holway (the respected independent IT industry analyst) has been complaining about this. Large non-IT sector companies have outsourced/offshored IT so they no longer offer as many graduate trainee positions. IT service companies have moved many jobs and therefore entry level graduate traning offshore, and relied on visas when skills are required in the UK. It is much more cost effective has been best practice in their global resourcing strategies for may years.

ArgieBee

Here is an article by Dr Michael Teitelbaum on the STEM shortage myth in the US:http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/
There is evidence of the same myth in the UK. If I remember correctly E-Skills used to do reports on IT skills/jobs. In the 2011 one, they pointed out that since about 2000 the incidence of training in the last 13 weeks in the UK for software professionals had fallen from 36% (i.e. similar to other SOC 2 professionals) to 22% (i.e. less training than the average worker in the UK in any job). Hardly the response you would expect from employers if there were skill shortages.
I guess the decline in training is also linked to the decline of IT jobs in large companies (e.g. as a result of outsourcing/offshoring) and more CS grads/IT workers finding work in much smaller companies. Large companies tend to spend much more of training and career development than smaller companies.

Robert Odigie

Computer Science as a stand alone degree subject is becoming extinct due to dynamic demand of industries and the economy:

1. Students of other disciplines, for example, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and various other subjects study computer science to degree level and fits into employment quickly

2. The introduction of Information Technology degree is understood by industry as inclusive of computer science and software. A degree in Information Management is therefore understood by industries as a better candidate for the work available. The hardwares are maintained by Microsoft certified technicians

The universities are to blame for duplication of degrees that cannot stand the test of time in industry.

James

I graduated with a Computer Science degree just over a year ago, the course included a placement year, which, in hindsight, has been invaluable in terms of my career prospects. I am now in my third job since graduating and have been able to add 50-75% to my salary both times. When I read the title of this blog I expected the data to say the opposite! More placement years!!

stupidcar

My personal experience while studying CompSci as an undergraduate was that there was a significant minority of students who displayed no apparent ability or aptitude for the subject whatsoever, particularly its practical application, e.g. programming. This wasn’t correlated with any particular ethnic, gender or socioeconomic group, but instead seemed related to having chosen the subject, or had it chosen for them, based only on a belief that “computers” offered a safe career path.

Such students could usually cope with the more theoretical modules, those closest to conventional academic subjects like mathematics, or those involving written or oral presentation. However, they struggled badly with modules that required a creative, programmer mindset, and which most closely resembled the skills required in actual employment in the technology industry. As programming modules only form a minority of the coursework required, this did not stop them graduating, however.

Now working in the technology industry, I see this problem play out in terms of recruiting graduate developers. A computer science degree provides little training in real-world software development, and while some graduates have huge natural aptitude for it, some have none whatsoever, and the nature of their degree provides little clue as to which it is. Most employers will therefore only consider candidates who possess a significant amount of experience, or who can demonstrate an existing level of skill in some other way (such as work on open source projects). For many candidates this results in a catch-22 situation where they cannot gain a job without experience, and cannot gain professional experience without a job.

morris

“A computer science degree provides little training in real-world software development”. This. I just graduated with a CS degree and upon reading this article and another one (http://goo.gl/jYUU0S), I just realised there is a huge gap between school-related/academic software development and real-world software development. I just wish that universities/colleges would prepare us more for the job market (internships are so-so) instead of just making it look easier than it actually is. The only solutions I see are gaining experience through other means like contributing to open source projects or making your own projects to beef up your cv.

HEFCE

Just to note that our recent report on ‘Differences in employment outcomes’ looks at early career employment in computer science and other subjects. See http://goo.gl/3YhLYR

Careers consultant

I agree with a lot of what stupidcar says. From my experience of supporting computer science students, I am amazed at how many arrive at the end of their final year saying that either they don’t know sufficient programming to be able to do a job that involves programming, or that they dislike programming enough that they won’t contemplate a job that involves this.
That said, I am even more amazed by the high proportion of jobs advertised to graduates labelled as “entry-level” (and with corresponding low salaries) that ask for a skillset that would be impossible for any finalist to provide, now matter how employability-targeted the curriculum in their university would be.

n_a_gordon

Be interesting to see how these issues of employability and
accreditation are potentially related: will the data on employability and the
survey itself be segmented – so that issues could be considered such as:

Do department’s with accreditation (BCS,
SkillSet, ACM or other) have better, the same, (or even worse ) – employability
ratings than departments that do not;

Is the profile of departments with accreditation
different in other ways (e.g. considering the pre- and post-92 sector, with
historically more focus on employability and vocational applications in the
post-92 sector);

The notions of poor employability often ignores
the much stronger positive destinations results for computer science – and
other factors around the computer science student cohort. It would be worth considering
positive destinations (i.e. in graduate level posts, technical roles, further postgraduate
training).

Perhaps look for patterns around intake grades
and profiles of students (socio-economic background) and employment patterns,
as well as NSS and good-degree (1st or 2.1) results (perhaps from
the unistats data).